Is it right to question the gospel truth? Opinion

In our first co-authored column, my son Ari and I tackled the existence of God. A strident atheist, Ari made my iconoclastic views seem moderate. Ari received many accolades, but also stern rebuke from some atheists, who ironically chastised him for chastising others, and insisted that Ari should not criticize those who believe in God, not because he is wrong, but because believers are better off living in delusion, and too fragile to handle the truth.

Now that we are free to speak our minds in America, they advise Ari to remain silent, just as Jews and free thinkers of the past were forced into silence by death and torture. Thomas Jefferson agreed with Ari and said "Question with boldness even the existence of God, because if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear." The greatest minds in history share this view:

"Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong." –Thomas Jefferson.

"For me, it is better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." –Carl Sagan.

"I don't know if God exists, but it would be better for His reputation if He didn't." –Jules Renard.

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." –Voltaire.

"A faith that does not challenge us, nudge us from our comfortable places, and call us to a higher sense of being and living is not worthy of our time, energy and resources." –Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.

"The danger of religious faith is that it allows otherwise normal human beings to reap the fruits of madness and consider them holy. Because each new generation of children is taught that religious propositions need not be justified in the way that all others must, civilization is still being besieged by the armies of the preposterous. We are, even now, killing ourselves over ancient literature. Who would have thought something so tragically absurd could be possible?" –Sam Harris.

Bishop Shelby Spong stated that anti-Semitism is as integral to the Catholic Church as the flying buttress. Catholic theologian James Carroll traced 2,000 years of anti-Semitism, from the Crusades, the Inquisitions, pogroms, ghettos and culminating in the Holocaust to belief in a Christian God who rejected Jews. A visiting pastor explained to our congregation that his religion taught him that since God was going to send all Jews to hell, Jews are expendable, and thus it was godly to remain silent during the Holocaust, and to send Jews on board the MS St. Louis back to their death in Europe. We are all too well aware that the God of the Koran is also not just innocuous nonsense, it is lethal.

Elie Wiesel asserts that many Jews were led to the slaughter during the Holocaust, waiting in vain for divine intervention that was promised by their rabbis if they prayed for help, and who blamed themselves for their predicament, due to lack of faith in God. He notes that it was mostly secular Jews who staged resistance, such as in the Warsaw ghetto, and who founded the state of Israel themselves rather than waiting for God to deliver them.

Charles Darwin said "To kill an error is as good a service, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact." Today, many Jews agree with Elie Wiesel that the old concept of a personal God seems to have died in the ashes of Auschwitz. Albert Einstein offers us a new concept of God, as does Carl Sagan as follows:

"In some respects, science has far surpassed religion in delivering awe. How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, 'This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed'? Instead they say, 'No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.'"

"A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge."